What invalidates a warranty or guarantee?

What invalidates a warranty or guarantee?

In his latest column for the Sunday Mirror, Dean Dunham takes a closer look at your rights when it comes to manufacturer warranties or guarantees.

It seems even breathing on something yourself is enough for a manufacturer to claim they don’t have to fix it – but it turns out even replacing a screen isn’t enough to invalidate your warranty when something else breaks.

Your actual rights explained

Many products are sold with a manufacturer’s warranties or guarantees, for typically between 1 and 5 years depending on the goods. A warranty is a contract between the consumer and the manufacturer, and the manufacturer must do whatever it promises it will do in the warranty. However, claiming under a warranty is not always straight forward or easy and many find that they can’t claim due some rule written into the ‘terms and conditions’. One common theme I hear is that the manufacturer has claimed that the warranty is void as a third party has effected a repair. Here are some examples:

iPhone screen repaired by a third party

Chad from Middlesex wrote to me in December and said that Apple had refused to fix his iPhone claiming that the warranty was void due to the fact that he had his screen repaired by a third party.

Sealed plug on SONY TV repaired by a third party

Lisa from Dartford wrote to me in February and said that Sony had refused to repair her television as the warranty was void due a third party replacing the sealed plug.

Fridge had part replaced by a third party

John from Stockport wrote to me this week and said that the manufacturer of his fridge (whom he did not name) had rejected his claim under the manufacturer’s warranty as he had used a third-party engineer to replace a part.

When they’re within their rights to reject your claim

In some cases, this will be a fair and reasonable approach, so for example if a third party replaces a motherboard in a laptop and you then claim that other parts that attach to the motherboard are ‘faulty’ it would be legitimate for the manufacturer to reject the claim. They, therefore, may not be able to establish if it was a genuine manufacturers fault or something caused by the work of the third-party repairer. However, the position is very different if the third-party repair has no relation to the fault that is subject to the manufacturer’s warranty claim.

When they still have to repair or replace it no matter what they claim

A good example is Chad’s claim about the iPhone. The fault he was complaining about had nothing to do with the cracked screen that had been repaired. The good news for Chad is that it appears that Apple seem to now agree with this concept as in March this year they told their employees to accept warranty claims, even if the screen had been previously repaired by a third party. Of course, Apple has limited this to claims where the fault isn’t linked to the third-party screen repair.

In conclusion, just because you use a third party to repair goods it does not mean that your warranty is automatically void and certainly does not take away your consumer right.

"We are an independent 'not for profit' and impartial organisation that specialises in resolving consumer disputes"

As of July 2017, Consumer Dispute Resolution Limited (“CDRL”) has resigned its membership with Ombudsman Association. CDRL operates four alternative dispute resolution schemes:

The Retail Ombudsman

AviationADR

UtilitiesADR

CommsADR

CDRL had aspirations to expand its ADR offering, under The Retail Ombudsman brand into sectors beyond high street and online retail. However, last year Ombudsman Association introduced a rule that it would only allow one ‘ombudsman’ scheme per sector which meant that CDRL would not be able to continue its expansion plans as an ombudsman. Naturally, CDRL had to respect this decision.

At the start of 2017 CDRL started the process of launching UtilitiesADR and CommsADR as non-ombudsman schemes. CDRL’s aviation scheme, approved by the Civil Aviation Authority, was then transitioned to a non-ombudsman scheme. The final step has been to transition the retail scheme, which has now been finalised and as part of this the scheme name has been changed from The Retail Ombudsman to RetailADR.

The Retail Ombudsman scheme has been a very big success and has attracted many big High Street and online brands as members. All these brands have agreed to continue to work with RetailADR, in recognition of the efficient, cost effective ADR service it provides.

The decision to transition from ombudsman to non-ombudsman has been taken entirely by CDRL and has been made to allow the continued growth of our very successful ADR model, which has benefited and will continue to benefit both consumers and traders. Government therefore did not withdraw CDRL’s right to use the ‘ombudsman’ title and the relevant competent authorities, that authorise CDRL under The Alternative Dispute Resolution for Consumer Disputes (Amendment) Regulations 2015 have been supportive of the transition.

For more Information or to submit a new claim please visit our website:www.cdrl.org.uk

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